Now we had a new set of Three Disasters. First, another cholera epidemic broke out. Grandmother died. It hurt to lose her. It hurt even more that I hadn’t been able to care for her in her final hours. Mi-ja also lost her aunt and uncle. Second, the fall harvest was extremely poor. The crops that sustained us—millet, barley, and sweet potatoes—failed. We were instructed to go to American distribution points to pick up bags of grain, but the former Japanese collaborators, who’d been put in charge of rationing, stole these provisions to sell on the black market. Within forty-five days, the price of rice doubled, not that we could ever afford to buy rice for more than the New Year’s celebration. At the same time, the price for electricity—in those few places on the island that had it—jumped fivefold.
And third, people began to go without other staples. Jeju’s population had doubled with those who’d returned from Japan since liberation and refugees from the north since the division of the country, but the Americans forbade us to trade with our former occupiers, which meant haenyeo families had no money to buy food. There were days when we squeaked by on a mixture of seaweed and barley bran. Other families subsisted on the potato pulp usually given to pigs, so even those beasts had to get by on less. On the mornings when I didn’t dive, I strapped Sung-soo to my back and—with Min-lee and Yu-ri trailing behind me—joined other mothers on the rocky shore to search for sand crabs to make into love-from-a-mother’s-hands porridge. Anytime one of the children found one, a squeal would ring out almost like a sumbisori. I spent long afternoons picking the meat from those tiny shells to make the porridge.
Mi-ja and I agreed to stay out of political discussions even as events roiled around us. On the radio we heard Colonel Brown, a new American in charge, tell us that the long-range goal for Jeju was “to offer positive proof of the evils of communism” and “to show that the American way offers positive hope.”
“Only one problem,” Jun-bu grumbled. “They want us to accept their form of democracy, with an American-backed dictator who can be controlled, while the people of Korea—especially here on Jeju—want to hold our own elections, with our own slate of candidates, so we can vote our own way. Isn’t that what democracy is supposed to be about?”
He took this a step further when Mi-ja and her family came to visit. “We should shove out the Americans like we did the French missionaries,” he stated, sure of his position.
“That was a small rebellion decades ago,” Sang-mun argued back. “The Christians are still here, and more are coming now that the Americans have arrived.”
“But we should be independent! If we don’t stand up for what we believe, then we are guilty of collaborating in our hearts.”
Collaborating. That word again.
On one matter Sang-mun appeared to agree. “At the very least we should have free elections.” But then he warned, “Free elections or not, let me tell you something, friend. You should be careful. You’re a teacher. Too much trouble gets stirred up in schools. Remember what they did to the women organizers from the Hado Night School and to their teachers?”
They were all dead, but I didn’t worry because my husband wasn’t an organizer, and he wasn’t going to lead a revolt. Besides, we had more practical things to worry about, like how we were going to feed our children.
One thing led to another, though, and people—organized by the newly formed South Korean Labor Party—began to plan a nationwide demonstration to take place on March 1, 1947, nineteen months after the war ended and on the same date that my countrymen had once held gatherings to promote independence from Japan. Here on Jeju, no matter what side people were on—rightist, leftist, or none-ist—they came from across the island to the starting point at an elementary school in the city.
The sky was bright, and the spring air felt fresh. Jun-bu carried Min-lee, and I had Sung-soo tied to my back. (Yu-ri stayed home with Granny Cho.) Mi-ja and Sang-mun brought Yo-chan. Our husbands had arranged a meeting spot, so we easily found each other, even though the crowd was larger than the one my mother had taken Mi-ja and me to fifteen years ago. Instead of Japanese soldiers watching us, hundreds of policemen kept us under observation. Many of them rode horses.
Our husbands wandered off to join a group of men, while Mi-ja and I stayed with the children. Yo-chan and Min-lee toddled together through the crowd, never getting too far from us. Yo-chan had the sturdy legs of his mother. My daughter was already dark from the sun, but she was wiry like her father.
“A boy and a girl,” Mi-ja said, smiling. “When they marry—”
“We’ll both be very happy.” I looped my arm through hers.
We saw people we knew: the Kang sisters and their families, and haenyeo with whom we’d done leaving-home water-work. I said hello to some women from the collective in Bukchon; Mi-ja introduced me to a few of her neighbors in Hamdeok.
When the speeches started, our husbands returned to us. “Let’s move closer to the stage,” Jun-bu said. “It’s important the children hear what’s said.”
But even I could have recited the speeches. Korea should be independent. We should reject foreign influence. North and south should be reunited, so that we’d be one nation. The last speaker called for us to march, but getting twenty thousand people to walk in the same direction at once takes time. We finally began to move, with the mounted policemen herding us. We lost sight of Sang-mun and Jun-bu. I picked up my daughter, and Mi-ja carried her son. Just ahead of us a little boy—although later I heard it might have been a girl—about six years old jumped and laughed, excited by all that was happening around us. When his mother reached for him, he twirled away, straight into the path of one of the mounted police. The rider yanked the reins. The horse reared. The mother screamed, “Look out!” The boy fell. The horse’s hooves crashed down.
The policeman, up so high, pulled sharply on the reins, trying to turn the animal. As a crowd, we realized he wasn’t going to dismount to offer help, even though what had happened was clearly an accident. A chorus of voices called, “Get him! Get him! Get him!” People threw stones, which further startled the horse. The rider kicked the animal’s withers. It danced from side to side, trying to make its way through the crowd.
“He’s heading to the police station!” someone shouted.
“Don’t let him get away!”
The chants turned to “Black dog! Black dog!”
We came around a corner and into a large square. Police stood on the broad steps leading to the entrance of the station, with their bayonets thrust threateningly before them. They didn’t know what had happened. All they saw was an angry mob rushing toward them. The demonstrators near the front tried to stop, turn around, and flee, but we were in a raging sea, being pushed this way and that. We heard several popping sounds. This was followed by an eerie moment of silence, with everyone frozen in place, assessing. Then the screams began. People scattered in every direction. Amid the chaos, Mi-ja pulled the kids and me into a doorway. As the crowd thinned, we saw little islands of people dotting the square. At the center of each group, lying on the ground, a person. Some wailed in agony from their wounds. Death silence hung over others. An infant’s cries hiccuped through the square. Mi-ja and I looked at each other. We had to help.
With our children still in our arms, we trotted in the direction of the sound. We reached a woman, who lay facedown. A bullet had entered her back. Her body lay partially atop her baby. We set down Yo-chan and Min-lee next to each other, so Mi-ja could lift the dead woman’s shoulder and I could pull out the infant. Her mouth was a pink hole from which the most pitiable cries squawked out. Her eyes were squeezed so tightly shut that I could see where she’d have wrinkles one day. She was covered in blood.
Mi-ja and I rose together. I put the baby on my shoulder and patted her, while Mi-ja checked to see if she was injured. We were both concentrating so hard that when Sang-mun grabbed Mi-ja’s arm and jerked her away from me, we were completely startled.
He screamed in Mi-ja’s face. “How could you put my son in danger?”
“He wasn’t in danger,” she replied calmly. “I was holding him when the horse bolted—”